A Department of Energy environmental remediation contractor has taken down the second nuclear reactor on the central campus of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the agency said Tuesday.
Amentum-led United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) has finished tearing down the Low Intensity Test Reactor, which is also known as building 3005. Demolition of the three-story structure started in March, DOE said in a press release. Deactivation began in August 2020.
Like the dismantling of the Bulk Shielding Reactor, which DOE announced last November, this demolition should free up additional space on the footprint of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the department said. As for the Low Intensity Test Reactor, the 1940s-era building was initially used as a training reactor for nuclear operators. A three-minute video on demolition of the facility can be viewed here.
Department of Energy contractor Bechtel National plans to open a new office in Knoxville, Tenn., next week for engineers and other staff, the company announced this month.
The new Engineering Executive Center was set to open Oct. 2 in the Cedar Bluff neighborhood in Knoxville, Bechtel said in a press release. The company said it will use the new location to help recruit new engineers.
Bechtel, based in Reston, Va., will keep its existing U.S. offices, including the one in nearby Oak Ridge Tenn., serving the Oak Ridge Site. Behctel’s prior work in the state includes nuclear power plants, the Y-12 National Security Complex and at the Arnold Air Force Base, according to the press release.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California’s first and longest-serving woman Senator, who wielded great influence over the federal government’s nuclear weapons, waste and energy programs as the leader of the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee, died Thursday in Washington at age 90, according to a statement from her chief of staff posted online just before 10 a.m. Eastern time Friday. The statement followed reports by multiple media outlets.
Feinstein’s home state of California did not host any of the major nuclear weapons cleanup sites the Senator oversaw as an appropriations cardinal, though over her decades on the Hill, she kept close tabs on the Santa Susana Field Laboratory outside of Los Angeles. Feinstein made sure that energy secretaries from Samuel Bodman to Rick Perry knew that she was keeping tabs on the not-quite 3,000 acre site even as she was writing the Department of Energy’s appropriations bills.
Amid continuing congressional brinkmanship over federal spending that had the federal government close to a shutdown, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) proposed amending the House’s 2024 budget bill for the Department of Energy to drop Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm’s salary to $1 a year.
Norman, who during the current budget debate has opposed stopgap bills that would keep the government open temporarily, made headlines after the most recent U.S. presidential election for asking then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to urge then-President Donald Trump (R) to invoke “Marshall Law!! [sic]” three days before Joe Biden (D) was sworn in as President.
Co-sponsoring the amendment is Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.), who has called for an impeachment inquiry into Granholm. Tenney said Granholm lied under oath in April, when the secretary of energy told Congress that she owned no individual stocks. Later, in June, Granholm said that she did own individual shares but that a government ethicist determined the ownership did not conflict with her official duties at DOE. Granholm said she has since sold those shares.
